Safe in the Five AM Light
by youaretoosmart
Summary: It was in times like these, Lydia thought as they drove away, that no time turned into months, and months turned to an indefinite number that stretched deadlines even farther away. / High school is over, and summer is starting; so are Stiles and Lydia. / Prompt for stydia-fanfiction on tumblr


**Thank you to Rachel (writergirl8 here, rongasm on tumblr) for beta reading this so thoroughly. I also want to point out that this was first posted on ao3 this summer. I'm just exporting my works from there to here.**

 **Title is from _Technicolour Beat_ by Oh Wonder. **

* * *

There wasn't a lot of time left, in the end.

Well, Lydia thought as she stood on the stage, looking down at the sea red and white robes glistening under the sun, that wasn't exactly true. There was a lot of time left, and this was only the first step to make this time turn into a lifetime, away from Beacon Hills and its not-so hidden secrets.

Her eyes searched the crowd and, after a moment, she found what she was looking for in a back row. Stiles grinned at her under the red edge of his mortar board. The wind picked up and ruffled his hair; a dark string fluttered against his forehead.

She smiled at him with her eyes, but when he started making faces to make her laugh, she chose to focus on Scott's proud and relaxed face instead.

She would not let herself be distracted by Stiles Stilinski, her ridiculous boyfriend, while delivering her valedictorian speech, up on a stage before her classmates for the last time— Even if seeing him in this attire was rather distracting. To her greatest horror and barely-repressed amusement, Lydia had noticed, during the past two weeks, that dating Stiles was not doing any good to her ability to focus—and that was not counting his fidgeting and constant rambling.

But she evenly went on, and finished her speech in time, without looking at her notes once, all the while maintaining enough eye contact with random people in the crowd to be assured to be listened to, because she was Lydia Martin, and her life was just beginning.

So she let the voices wash over her and replace, for a moment, the whispers in her head. She could swear that she heard Stiles clap the loudest of all.

* * *

"So," Stiles began suddenly as they settled on the hood of the jeep. He handed her one of the Angry Orchard and unscrewed the other.

There was a certain feeling to the warm evening, like a film from the 80s, the kind that made you want to hold deep conversations with your friends and say bittersweet adieus to an old life.

"So, high school's over," he said again after a sip, egging her on.

"Wow, what gave it away? Was it the acceptance letters or the graduation ceremony?"

"Don't forget the lack of classes to attend."

"And you know what they say: three's a pattern."

She pulled the key ring with the corkscrew from around his finger when it became clear that he was too focused on whatever he wanted to say to give it to her. A tired sense of determination washed over her. She wasn't fully satisfied with her future plans which involved her studying in Boston and Stiles' in California, and she never would be, but she was tired of dread. She had spent the last years living through what ifs and regrets, and now seemed like a good time to start appreciating the present.

"Stiles, I'm not going anywhere. "

"You're going to Boston. That's somewhere. And that somewhere is somewhere far away from here."

She rephrased:

"Stiles, _we're_ not going anywhere." Then, almost shyly—and Lydia Martin was never shy, but Stiles had a way of bringing forward her strongest weaknesses—she added: "Are you changing your mind?"

He looked at her with blinking eyes for a moment, silently forming the words, until their meaning seemed to hit him fully. He reared back and caught himself on the headlight.

"Changing my—woah, Lydia, _no_. Oh my God, of course I'm not gonna change my mind. Did you think— I mean—Oh my God, I'm _so sorry_!"

Lydia shrieked a bit and instinctively shrank away from his tumultuous bottle, which he had largely emptied on her blouse mid-flailing.

"Hum," he said while they both watched the stain grow on the thin cotton. "I think I have a hoodie in the back. Do you want it?"

"Well, I don't really feel like showing off my boobs to the rest of the world for the whole night."

She pretended not to hear him trip on his way to the trunk.

"I wouldn't mind," he still called over his shoulder.

"Should I call Scott and Liam over, then?"

She waved at them when the two werewolves turned around. Damn supernatural hearing. Stiles quickly returned to her side and handed her the hoodie—a green one, which would look great with her skirt—with a frown on his face. She reached out to ruffle his hair.

"Oh, come on. I doubt either of them is interested in my bra."

"But it's the black one!"

He followed her to the side of the jeep, away from the rest of the pack who were still sitting around the campfire.

"It's navy," she said assertively while changing.

"Looks pretty black to me."

"It's because it's dark. But it's navy. Trust me. I have a 170 IQ."

"Oh, sure, because _that's_ your argument. That makes so much sense—"

She cut him off with a long and searing kiss, as she'd wanted to do since that morning, when she had seen him in those deep maroon robes. The fact that she could now shut him up that way doubly excited her, and gave life to gentle ache in her belly, the one that didn't even come close to butterflies.

Stiles leaned even more into the kiss, and gently pushed her against the side of the car; his left arm sneaked around her waist, pulling her flush against him. He was, as always, hot as a furnace, and his warmth seeped from his chest, his hands, his lips into her. It pooled low in her stomach, and for a moment Lydia even regretted putting on the hoodie.

When they broke apart, breathing heavily, Stiles glanced briefly over the car's roof. When he focused back on her, his eyes had a dazed look.

"Maybe we could go somewhere else and you could show me how navy it is?"

"Absolutely," Lydia agreed, unlocking her fingers from his hair.

It was in times like these, Lydia thought rather incoherently as they drove away after some hasty goodbyes, that no time turned into months, and months turned to an indefinite number that stretched deadlines even farther away.

* * *

He was late. Stiles was late.

She shouldn't have been surprised, after all; he was probably still glued to the computer, searching the internet for information about owl's sleeping habits or other enlightening information. He should have been trying to get some sleep of his own, but that was another matter.

On the other hand, a little bit of punctuality, especially on their first date wouldn't have hurt a bit.

He was already running thirteen minutes late and if there was one thing that Lydia hated, it was to be left waiting. Especially without any news; she was starting to fear something supernatural related had happened and _she hadn't been informed_ (which wouldn't be a first; she had yet to get over sophomore year). Whatever the situation, she was hoping for an explanatory text. It was always better to know.

She checked her phone one last time, and it buzzed to life in her hand. It was from Stiles.

 _Shit_

Eloquent.

 _Shit shit shit shit_

 _Lydua im so dorry. i can ecplain iswear. Im here in 5_

Followed a long list of random emojis _à la_ seemed like the worst excuse text of the world so she just answered, _Write less and run more_ , and even added a period for effect. Not two minutes later, her disheveled and panting boyfriend erupted in the restaurant, just in time to catch her eyeroll.

"Did you really run all the way here?" she asked when he sat, left arm awkwardly bent behind his back.

"Oh yeah. The jeep refused to cooperate. I had to leave it in a park."

"Ran out of duct tape?"

"Yup. Wouldn't be able to see it around the black smoke anyways, so."

"Well, next time I'm definitely picking you up."

He flashed her a smile so genuinely bright that Lydia felt her anger melt like snow in the sun. She leant forward and gently kissed him, reveling in her ability to do so, and poured into it all the affection and tenderness she felt but was not able to express openly. They broke apart too soon for her liking, but his right hand stayed where it was cupping her cheek. She pressed into it.

"What was that for?" he asked, with a low voice and a brush of his thumb on her lips.

"Because I can."

 _I'm glad you're here._

He gave her one of these crooked smiles of his, the one that somehow turned his mouth upside down.

 _I love you._

But he suddenly seemed to realize that his left arm was still incapacitated behind him and extended it.

"Oh, I nearly forgot. Here. For you."

He presented her with a freshly cut, fully blooming red carnation, the kind that only grew in one place in Beacon Hills.

"Did you actually pick it from Ms Nielsen's garden?"

"Did I say park? I meant sidewalk on Washington street."

"Stealing a flower from Beacon Hills' oldest gardener. What a feast."

"Don't forget fiercest. She used to chase Scott and me with a rake for at least half a mile when we crashed in her rose bushes with our bikes. "

"My hero," Lydia said dryly while she slipped the flower in her braid. The petals fluttered slightly against the skin in her low cut shirt; she could feel Stiles' eyes follow their movement before they met hers and focused on the salt shaker instead.

There was a lull in the conversation afterwards that inexplicably felt incredibly awkward; Lydia had the strange feeling of being on a first real date with a boy she had met the week before and not her best-friend-turned-boyfriend. The waiter came and left, but the silence only grew stronger as they both tried to keep the conversation going while counting the stitches in the hem of the almond-colored tablecloth.

 _Fourty-three, fourty-four..._

"So, um, what did you do today?"

Stiles looked at her incredulously. Lydia felt like banging her head on the table. They had spent the day together at his house, and there wasn't much that could have happened to him— hopefully— in the last two hours.

"I think Liam and Hayden are back together," he finally blurted out at the one-hundred and seventh stitch.

She cocked an eyebrow.

"They'd broken up since last week?"

"Apparently," he shrugged. "Scott told me the story when we were looking for him yesterday for some lacrosse thing, but I didn't pay attention."

"Did you even find him?"

"Oh, yeah. At Hayden's."

They shared a knowing smirk and for a second Lydia thought they might have overcome their initial awkwardness, but soon enough the silence came back, interrupted from time to time by a comment about plans to drive the pack to Lydia's lake house that they had already finalized that afternoon, the food once it came and, God forbid, the weather.

Lydia was starting to despair. Even a serious conversation about their going to college on each side of the country would be preferable, even though they'd promised to themselves to do everything to enjoy every moment of the summer together. That was why they'd finally gone on a date three months into dating, since neither of them were really used to going on official dates.

"Order a tiramisu for me if the waiter comes back before I do," she said when the main course was cleared off and she couldn't bear it anymore. "I'll be gone for a minute."

Stiles made a noise of agreement and kept on perusing the desserts, biting on his thumb nail. A huge feeling of relief settled in Lydia's core as she crossed the room, away from their bubble of awkwardness, immediately followed by guilt for thinking so. Thankfully, the little bathroom seemed empty and all of the stall doors were open, so Lydia had no problems sighing as loud as she wanted.

Feeling agitated and on the verge of panic, now that she wasn't directly facing the beast anymore, she focused on pacing the floor along the pointing, as if walking on a thin, thin line far above the ground.

There weren't many options left, she thought while daintily placing one heeled foot in front of the other. She could go back and face the awkwardness, let it drown them for the evening and part ways. Leave the mending for the next day.

Their relationship, genuine and fragile as it was, wouldn't survive, and Lydia wanted, _needed_ it to work.

She entertained the ridiculous idea of escaping through the high window. She could see it from here: perched on her high heels on the sink, body arched to go through the small opening, Stiles laughing his ass off down in the room...

This _really_ was going nowhere.

She went to the mirrors to adjust her lipstick but she stopped when she felt the flutter of petals against her bare forearm. She gently picked the carnation up. She hadn't taken a lot of time to admire it when he'd given it to her, but the flower truly was beautiful—Ms Nielsen's always were. The petals, wide-open, showed no sign of wilting.

"Damn you, Stiles Stilinski," she muttered before marching out of the room.

The desserts had just arrived when she came back. She sat and blurted out:

"So, we're bad at going on dates. But who cares?" she added when Stiles, speechless for once, stared at her. "We don't need to go on dates to date. And I'm not letting this weird awkwardness come between us. We're going to make this work because we're us and that's what we do."

"Thank God," Stiles breathed, sitting back. "For a moment, I thought you'd escaped through the back window or something."

She snorted, Stiles sent her a knowing look, and suddenly they were themselves again. They didn't even hesitate when he knocked down the salt shaker in her half-eaten tiramisu; she moved the plate to the side, he pushed his on the middle of the table, and they simply shared his profiteroles.

Chocolate suited Lydia's mood better than the bitterness of coffee anyway, and later, it tasted better on him.

* * *

Lydia woke up with a ray of sunshine tickling her face. She froze a moment, disoriented, but the gentle squeezing of Stiles' arm brought her back to the present.

"'Morning", he said sleepily in her hair.

She hummed an answer and rolled on her back, facing him. In true Stiles fashion, he was sprawled on his front with one arm extended over her waist, squeezing her to him.

"Mmmm," she said again as she took him in. "You should wear gel less often, your hair looks great like that."

" _You_ look great," he countered, hovering over her with soft eyes and a grin.

He started placing hot, open-mouthed kisses up her neck, finally settling and sucking on that one spot below her ear, the one that made her incapable of answering properly and glad to be laying down.

"Stiles—" she involuntarily gasped.

"I know," he teased. "We rock."

She let out a breathless laugh and turned her head to finally meet his lips. He responded with great enthusiasm, and for a while they laid there making out on his bed, bathed in sunlight peeking through the blinds.

Soon enough, though, the expression hot and bothered took a whole new meaning for Lydia—and a rather literal one. At that point, the added warmth of Stiles, now fully positioned on top of her, and of the covers intertwined around her legs, was beginning to make her uncomfortably hot and a bit dizzy.

She tried to kick off the sheets tucked around her, but the movement only served to increase the friction between them. They broke apart to groan simultaneously.

"Wait, Stiles," she panted, momentarily blinded by a ray of light.

When she blinked back to the semi-obscurity of the room, Stiles was looking down at her, all shining eyes and glistening lips. Lydia wanted nothing more than to keep going, but the sticky feeling she got when she pressed her thighs together urged her to stop.

"God, you're so hot," she groaned.

"Uh, thanks? We've already established you're not too shabby yourself."

"No, I mean literally. You're like a walking radiator. Come on," she said as she tapped his side lightly. "Let me up. I need a refreshing shower."

With a sigh, he rolled over and stood up, stretching widely. His shirt rode up a few inches, letting her sneak a peek at the soft skin of his back. She honestly didn't know how he could sleep like that—she had herself decided to forgo any clothing for the night, and yet here she was.

She was also pretty sure that their clothes had been thrown around the whole room, and at the time she hadn't really entertained the idea of looking for her panties on the ceiling fan at three in the morning.

"Hey," Stiles said suddenly, "I think I found your panties. They slipped under the dresser, wait—"

They seemed to have slid under rather deeply, since he even had to move the piece of furniture from the wall to get to them. Lydia didn't know whether to be amused or embarrassed, but when he triumphally emerged with a handful of green lace, exclaiming that "luckily his father made him vacuum his room three days ago", laughter won.

He threw her her underwear and a lacrosse jersey, and they cheered when she caught them with the tip of her fingers just before they hit the lamp.

"So, my dad must be at work by now, and I suggest that you and I take this downstairs. I don't know about you, but I feel like pan—"

They both started when the door opened suddenly and the Sheriff came in.

"Stiles, why the hell are you moving your furniture ar—err, hello, Lydia."

There was a moment of silence as the three of them froze, before Stiles jumped up, flailing madly, and Lydia uttered a weak hello to her boyfriend's father.

"Dad! Hi dad, hi dad, hi. So you're up! Of course you're up. But, uh, you're surprisingly not at work! This, um, this isn't what it looks like at all."

"Stiles—"

"And actually, I don't think it looks like much at all, do you? I mean, here we are, two adults, may I add, fully clothed..."

"Stiles."

"... enjoying a nice, err, sleepover, a completely platonic sleep—"

"Stiles!" the Sheriff and Lydia exclaimed at the same time.

"Stiles," his father said forcefully once he quieted down, "I really don't want to know about your platonic sleepover with your mature, grown-up girlfriend. I really _don't_. I was just going to tell you to remember to call your grandmother today, it's her birthday."

"Oh, okay. Call grandma. Yeah, I can do that. Have a good day, then."

With a final roll of his eyes and a smile to Lydia, the Sheriff disappeared; a minute later, they heard his cruiser pull out of the driveway.

"Pancakes?" Stiles offered weakly.

Lydia climbed out of bed at last, and took her time to stretch out her sleepy limbs.

"Yes, please. And also," she added as she came up to him to peck him on the lips, "'fully clothed'? Sweetheart, you're still holding my bra."

* * *

Despite Lydia's much larger bed, there was something enthralling about going over to Stiles'; they often ended up cooking, because his oral fixation didn't only show up in bed. Seeing Stiles in his natural habitat, surrounded by food, pots, pans, and devices that Lydia, to her initial horror, didn't know the name of, was a sight for sore eyes. And while Lydia's banshee powers were more of an auditory thing, sometimes her eyes burned too. She deserved good things.

"Can you pass the butter, please?" Stiles asked absentmindedly as he stirred the sauce for dinner.

"The melted one?"

"Yup. Thanks."

He focused back on the pot as he gently added the butter, the tiniest bit of tongue sticking out. Lydia sat back on the kitchen island, propped her chin on her hands, and stared at his butt.

"Hollandaise sauce is easy to make, you know," he was saying, explaining cooking to her as he'd done for the last half hour. "But there's eggs in it, of course, and that's where you have to be careful, 'cause you can't let them cook too quickly. Otherwise they don't—wowza!"

He quickly took the pot off the stove and and turned the flames down.

"You have to be careful with the heat too," he added sheepishly. "Especially when you don't cook it with a bain-ma— why're you looking at me like that?"

"Nothing," Lydia lied, biting her lip. "So, about that bain-marie?"

"Well, that's all. Can you find the lemon juice? And people often cut it with water, but when I cook it with fish, I like to use its cooking water. Um, not enough lemon, what do you think?"

He had the audacity to held out a spoon without even looking at her, the little shit. God. Lydia really wanted to jump him. She decided that from now on, she'd avoid restaurant dates and takeouts as much as possible.

She slowly tasted the sauce, trying to make eye contact with him—it wasn't fair that she be the only one frustrated about his father's being in the next room. But, incredibly, he was still adding more lemon juice in the pot, oblivious to her.

"So, good? Okay, you're starting to freak me out. Do I have something on my face?"

"Mmm, yeah, actually. Right. Here."

She had to tiptoe to kiss him. One of his hands gripped his wooden spoon tighter, but after a moment he cupped the back of her head with the other and deepened the kiss. To her greatest pleasure, he tasted like lemon and hollandaise sauce.

She let out a muffled shriek when he suddenly hoisted her up on the counter and snaked her legs around his waist, pulling him even closer.

"Wait," he muttered in the kiss. "Wasn't there water here?"

"Nope," she said impatiently even though she could feel it against her thigh. "Shut up and kiss me."

"Will do."

Only moments later, when they'd found a great rhythm of shallow rubbing and thrusting, a faint crackling sound broke them apart.

" _Fuck_ , the sauce!" Stiles exclaimed before rushing to the stove.

The pot was overflowing with pale yellow foam; fat drops of sauce slowly made their way down the metal and and sizzled in the fire.

Stiles made an anguished sound in the back of his throat; he hastily removed the pot from the fire and started stirring frenetically.

"You need to get oxygen in," Lydia pointed out, feeling slightly guilty.

"I know." She decided that he hadn't wanted to sound as frustrated as he did. "Pass me that whisk over there, will you?"

A few expletives later, Stiles seemed to have the situation back under control. He gingerly placed the pot back on the stove and turned to Lydia.

"You," he said, squinting his eyes, but without malice in his voice. "Out."

"What?"

"You're going to wait in the living-room with dad. Here," he said and gave her a carafe before firmly leading her out of the kitchen by the shoulders. "Put that on the table."

"Are you seriously throwing me out of the kitchen?"

"Yes I am, you villainous wench, destroyer of sauces. You're going to ruin it with your seduction skills. So, out."

Lydia humphed and protested, but the door gently closed behind her. She put the carafe on the table as instructed, and inverted Stiles' knife and fork just because she could. She slowly made her way to the living-room, where the Sheriff sat, reading over a file.

"He threw you out, didn't he?" he said with a knowing smile, when he saw her come in. "Welcome to the club. Here—I have some snacks, but don't tell him."

Lydia took a whole handful of pistachios and began to feel marginally better as the Sheriff took advantage of the kitchen's closed door to show her Stiles' middle school pictures.

* * *

"Ouch."

"Sorry, sorry! Do you have the brush?"

"Again? Stiles, at this rate I'm going to be bald by tomorrow."

"You'll be the prettiest bald banshee in the whole town, though," he assured her as he brushed gently over a knot.

"Great, it'll look good on my resume."

"Aren't you getting ahead of yourself a bit? You still need to go to college before all that."

"I won't win my Fields Medal before turning thirty without a bit of planning. Careful!"

"Well, at least you'll have a professional braider boyfriend to support you. Whoops."

A lock fell in Lydia's face and she blew it out of her sight before Stiles intercepted it again.

"How blessed I am," she said dryly as Stiles fumbled with her hair again. "Have you ever thought of starting macramé?"

"What's that? That sounds lethal."

"Ouch!"

"Sorry, sorry."

Lydia sighed and leant forward as much as Stiles allowed her to without pulling too much on her hair. She adjusted her physics book on the mattress between her feet and propped her elbows on her knees. She waved at Scott, who was warily making his way toward them, holding a tray full of colourful glasses decorated with straws and little umbrellas.

"Scott, you're a godsend," she sighed as he handed her a cocktail that looked vivid green through her sunglasses.

"Well, you're letting us come over your lake house for two whole weeks, so I'd say it's nothing."

"Still, your payment is so much better than this one's. Stiles, my hair is still attached to my head and I'd like to keep it that way, please."

He tutted derisively but his next movements were more gentle.

"Why did you ever agree to let him braid your hair, that's the real question," Scott noted as he wandered a bit to hand a cocktail to Malia, who gulped it down in two seconds.

"Because she wanted to be able to look all smug and mighty when I'd fail, which won't happen because I happen to know how to braid."

Lydia elbowed him lightly in the gut and he squirmed in protest, unable to truly escape her because of the lounging chair they were both seated on. He managed not to pull on her hair, but the knees on either side of her nearly knocked her drink of her hand.

"Stiles, I swear if you spill one drop of cocktail on this white Egyptian linen, I will end you," she warned. "It's my mother's and she's had enough of the claw marks in the basement."

"That's why I brought straws," Scott prompted.

"Yeah, well stop laughing at me and help my poor dehydrated human body, will you?"

Without hesitation, Scott held the glass for him, with the straw ready for Stiles to drink even with his hands otherwise occupied.

"You're unbelievable," Malia said as she passed them on her way to the lake.

"I'd like to see you manage fishtail braids on your own," he said, not bothering to look up. "Uh, left or right?"

"Left," they all said.

"But I don't brag and pretend to be able to thanks to countless hours spent on the internet when everyone should be sleeping," Malia countered. "This one is 100% on you, Stiles. I have no pity."

When he didn't answer, she shrugged and run down to the lake, cannonballing from the pier and copiously drenching Liam and Mason.

"There!" Stiles exclaimed hardly a minute later. "It's done. You're not bald. My hands have no blood left in them. You guys suck. The bees are safe."

Lydia held two mirrors up to catch her reflexion from the back, where a slightly disheveled braid hung. It wasn't actually all that terrible; sure, it was crooked, there were certainly entire strands falling out, and the constant brushing had made her hair electrical, but she was pretty sure her own first attempts hadn't necessarily looked better.

"Mmmm," she said appreciatively as he rested his head on top of hers and met her eyes in the mirror, pulling her against him. "I can see that macramé future of yours, after all. Stiles Stilinski, braider extraordinaire."

"It'll look good on my resume," he agreed, and his chest rumbled against her back as he laughed.

* * *

There was a loud and sudden noise coming from upstairs, like something heavy was being dragged on the floor, then a clatter and and a swear.

Lydia hid the spare key under the loose floorboard next to the empty flower pot and stepped inside.

"Stiles?" she called to the empty hall, wincing when the voices rattled in her head—today was one of these days where her banshees senses tickled her all the time without her actually screaming to relieve them.

"Bedroom!" he yelled back, and it was a real proof of how deep in she was, that she nearly exclaimed _yes, please_ right here and then.

When she made her way up to his room, the scene that awaited her was not one she'd have expected to see when picking up her still jeepless boyfriend for a movie date. All the furniture had been pushed away from the walls, the bed was stripped down of its covers, dumped on top of a towering pile of dirty clothes, but had gained a desk chair and several board games boxes.

In the middle of it all, Stiles was trying to reach under his desk to pick up a stack of papers that had just fallen.

"Is this a late spring cleaning?" Lydia asked, stepping over the vacuum cleaner to make her way to the bed.

"Dad gave me an ultimatum and a three-day notice that ended an hour ago," her boyfriend grunted, still under his desk.

"I guess that means our date is cancelled."

He hit his head in his haste to turn toward her.

"Ouch. Wait, no, we can still go. Give me a minute."

"What are his terms?" she said, hooking her heels in the vacuum cleaner's cord to unplug it. The pounding in her head decreased a bit, but the constant muttering stayed there.

"He gets to choose dinner for the rest of the summer," Stiles grumbled as he tried to straighten the papers.

She cocked an eyebrow.

"That's three weeks and he'll get to do that for the rest of the year when you're in college," she said.

"I know! That's what I told him but he just said 'So clean up!' and he left. Fathers, I swear."

She toed off her shoes and gently pushed him back under the desk.

"Forget the date," she sighed. "My head's hurting a bit, anyway. I don't really feel like going to the movies."

"The voices?"

"Yeah. Are these clothes clean?"

At his sound of agreement, she opened his dresser and started to put away his laundry, refolding all of his tee-shirts at the same time.

Tidying up with Stiles was apparently great for her head, since at the end of the afternoon both the pounding and the voices had nearly disappeared; they even turned the radio on bad 80s songs and found themselves silly dancing to them. It also included, as Lydia discovered, some more headbanging, incredulous exclamations when Stiles dug out old school reports and pictures of Scott and himself in middle school, and even a mock fight for what Stiles dubbed "drafts" of ten-page long essays on some of the finest points in _Star Wars_.

"Wait, wait, wait," Lydia exclaimed, perched on his bed to escape his long arms, "is that a comparison of _Star Wars_ vs _Star Trek_? I think I read it online once..."

"Yeah," he said disgruntled, "I was thirteen and I'd just discovered a site for sci-fi essays, but some jackass I chatted with posted it before me, so... Wait," he added suddenly, squinting at her, " _you read it online once_?"

She huffed, stepped aside, papers still in hands, and smoothed her skirt.

"I may have written one too," she admitted regally. "It was a study of the epic tradition in the trilogy. It's up on the site for forty dollars. Why do you think I asked for a credit card in seventh grade?"

He stared at her with a familiar expression of amazement that warmed her from the inside and helplessly made her grin. He shook his head and gently helped her down his bed.

"Every time I think I've just discovered how awesome you are, you go and do stuff like that. It's not fair for the rest of us, Lydia."

"Well," she said, feeling a bit at loss for words, "you're not too helpless yourself. Your essay is way better written and more convincing that the one I read online. It's pretty impressive."

They had to force themselves to go back to work after half an hour of break, but when Stiles just waved at her to throw the essay away, she instead folded it in her handbag.

They heard the sound of his father's car pulling in the driveway around seven, which roused them from their post-cleaning torpor, and they tried to move the furniture back to their proper place the most discreetly possible. When the Sheriff noisily made his way upstairs ("I saw Lydia's car parked in front of the house, I hope you're decent"), they were innocently taking down the last proofs of any supernatural shenanigans from his crime board.

"Mmm," he said while inspecting the room (Lydia sat back on the dirty shirt they'd forgotten on his desk chair), "what proof do I have that you did it in time?"

"Well, technically none, but... trust me?"

"Try again."

"Trust... Lydia?"

She opened wide, innocent eyes, clutching gruesome police photos of disembowelled corpses.

"Lydia, I trust," the Sheriff admitted, and turned back to the hallway. "Well, I suppose I just have to throw away that pizza I bought for dinner..."

Stiles jumped up, getting tangled in colored wool, and followed him to the door.

"What flavor?"

"Pepperoni."

"Extra cheese?"

"And onions and red pepper. But, you know—cheese. It's fat."

"Wait, wait, no!" He sighed, played and knowing it. The creaking in the stairs stopped for a moment. "Okay, but just for tonight," he relented. "Can Lydia stay?"

"I bought the fig and goat cheese one for her!"

After they called thanks and the Sheriff went to heat them up, Stiles turned to Lydia and threw the photos and police reports away.

"It feels empty without the investigation process," he said as he stared at it.

"You could always put something else up," she suggested while holding up the heavy photo album they'd fished out from under his bed.

He took it and opened it, exclaiming over all the pictures from their childhood, hanging them on the board with green wool (he'd run out of red a while ago, he explained, and didn't like the yellow one).

"Look how proper you looked," he said, holding up their class photo from fourth grade. "Sitting all straight and staring down at the teacher."

"She was an idiot; she forbade me to read in class, can you believe that? Oh, here's Maryse Garcia—I saw her at the mall the other day."

"Does she still have her knee-length hair?"

"It's all splintered but she won't cut it; I think she's trying to be the new Rapunzel. And why are you the only one that looks blurry?"

"I think Scott had just tried to push me off the bench. Or he put a bug down my shirt—I can't remember. But it was totally Scott's fault."

"Mmmm."

She turned a page, and in the middle of all the smiling photos of Scott and Stiles sat a picture that Lydia immediately knew had been misplaced. Stiles stiffened, picked up the photo of his mother and him as a toddler, and silently put it away in a drawer of his desk. He didn't say anything, and Lydia didn't pry; she understood that he didn't want to talk about her so early in their relationship.

After all, they had time.

* * *

"It's okay," Allison said breathlessly, and the red of her nails stood out obscenely against the black and white ground.

Lydia's heart was beating furiously, as she held Allison's limp body with arms that weren't hers, cried and pleaded, her voice laced with love that felt achingly familiar and foreign.

"Allison," she called again, but her hoarse words broke in her throat.

And when her friend answered _I love you Scott McCall_ , the scream she let out was her own, hunched over a cold, unconscious Stiles in a dirty tunnel that suddenly limited her world.

She woke up without a start or a sound, drenched in cold sweat. She abruptly opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling in Stiles' bedroom, unable to move but for breathing. The soft movement of her chest— _up, down, up, down_ —and the rapid blinking of her eyes felt like such a luxury, that Lydia suddenly craved human contact; anything to pull her back to the living.

Night sounds gradually invaded her hearing again; a distant car slowing down in the neighborhood, leaves rustling, night birds hooting and flying past the open window, the quick clinking sound of a keyboard, the house cracking...

Keyboard?

She turned her head, and sure enough, Stiles was still sitting at his desk, headphones half-heartedly hanging from his ears. He sat back with a sigh, and took a sip of his green mug, which Lydia hoped contained hot chocolate and not caffeine.

He didn't hear her get up and make her way to him, but he didn't start too much when she suddenly hugged him from behind, hiding her face in his shoulder.

"Did you even go to sleep?" she asked, voice muffled in his shirt.

"Nope," he said nearly cheerfully after dropping a kiss on her clammy forehead. "Why're you up? I didn't make noise, did I?"

"Not you," she sighed, and he took her her hand with a frown.

"Nightmares?" he guessed.

"Mmmm."

He smelt good, like boy, warm body, and safety. They stayed like that for a few minutes while Lydia soaked in his scent and slowed her heartbeat to match the slow movements of his hand stroking her arm.

"C'mere," he muttered when her back started to ache from the awkward position.

He swiveled in his chair and she fell in his lap, emotionally and physically exhausted. From here, she could see the numerous browser tabs he'd opened, which names could barely be read.

"What are you reading about?" she asked as she moved from the Google translate Chinese-English tab to the closest one.

"Err, _Cyperus trachysanthos_ , apparently. It's a plant that grows—"

"In Hawaii," she finished, scanning the short article. "But these informations are actually wrong; it's not 'sixty to seventy centimeters high', damn it, it's barely a foot and a half tall. Do you have an account?"

Stiles watched her amusedly as she grumbled and edited the article, linking back to a "serious scientific site they should have consulted if people weren't so lazy". When she'd done her duty as a respectable Wikipedian, she showed him an article she'd read while thinking about him, then they ended up browsing obscure Youtube videos of incredible animal incidents and experimental scientific projects that made her snort.

The sun slowly rose without their noticing, and as the blinds clattered in the morning wind, Lydia snuggled deeper in Stiles' warmth. August was drawing to its end, and college, closer and closer still, but that didn't matter because they had all the time in the world.

 _It's okay_ , she silently told Allison when they took a break "to rest their eyes" around five in the morning. _It's okay. I love him._

* * *

 **You can find me on tumblr at youaretoosmart and on ao3 at cave_canem.**

 **Someone made a podfic of this fic, which is incredible.** **You can find it here: stydiacast*tumblr*com/post/150376039449/stydiacast-presents.**

 **Check out Stydiacast at the same time!**


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